On March 1, 2010, Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a press release announcing that BAE Systems plc (BAES) pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by impairing and impeding its lawful functions, to make false statements about its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) compliance program, and to violate the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). BAES was sentenced to pay $400 million criminal fine.

Headquartered in the U.K., BAES is a multinational defense contractor. The company also has a U.S. subsidiary, BAE Systems, Inc., headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. None of the criminal conduct described in the case is attributable to the American company.

According to court documents, from approximately 2000 to 2002, despite its promises to create mechanisms to ensure compliance with the legal prohibitions on foreign bribery stemming from FCPA, as well as foreign laws implementing the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention, BAES knowingly and willfully failed to do so.

Instead, BAES made a series of substantial payments to shell companies and third party intermediaries that were not subject to the degree of scrutiny and review to which BAES told the U.S. government the payments would be subjected. BAES admitted it regularly retained what it referred to as "marketing advisors" to assist in securing sales of defense items without scrutinizing those relationships.

BAES also encouraged the advisors to establish their own offshore shell companies to receive payments from BAES while disguising the origins and recipients of these payments. BAES set up a company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) to conceal its marketing advisor relationships and to circumvent laws in countries that did not allow such relationships, to create obstacles for investigators to penetrate the arrangements, and to assist advisors in avoiding tax liability for payment from BAES.

BAES used this BVI entity to make payments totaling more than £135 million in addition to $14 million, although being aware, in some cases, that there was a high probability that part of the payment would be used to ensure that BAES was favored in foreign government contracts regarding purchase of defense articles.

BAES also served as the prime contractor to the U.K. government in the mid-1980s, after the U.K. and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) entered into a formal understanding. There, BAES provided "support services" resulting in substantial benefits to a foreign public official of KSA, who was in position to influence sales of fighter jets, and other defense materials and related support services. BAES did not review or verify benefits provided to the KSA official, including it did not perform adequate review of more than $5 million in invoices submitted by a BAES employees from May 2001 to early 2002 to establish whether the listed expenses were in compliance with previous statements made by BAES to the U.S. government regarding its anti-corruption compliance measures.

As part of its guilty plea, BAES has agreed to maintain a compliance program designed to detect and deter violations of the FCPA, other foreign laws implementing the OECD Anti-bribery Convention, and any other applicable anti-corruption laws, and that is designed to detect and deter violations of the AECA and ITAR, as well as similar export control laws.